What a Prayer!

from "The Wreck of the Deutschland"

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

With an anvil-ding 

And with fire in him forge thy will 

Or rather, rather then, stealing as Spring 

Through him, melt him but master him still: 

Whether at once, as once at a crash Paul, 

Or as Austin, a lingering-out swéet skíll, 

Make mercy in all of us, out of us all 

Mastery, but be adored, but be adored King. 

Riding on the Wind

It's Poetry Friday and I'm trying to get back on track. After traveling for ten days and teaching at a yoga training and writing a month worth of poems a day (my first time for managing such a feat), I'm finally coming back to some equilibrium!

Violet Nesdoly is hosting Poetry Friday at her blog. Stop by and enjoy.

There were moments in the last month when I felt the astonishing freshness of walking into a strong wind. You know how it feels when the press of air is so fierce, you can stand still and lean into it and not fall flat on your face? And then there were moments when I felt like a fallen leaf blown helter skelter with no ability to determine its own course.

During the month, I re-read this poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. I love the power of this picture of the falcon riding on the current of air.

Photo by Pacific Southwest Region U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

The Windhover

by Gerard Manly Hopkins

             To Christ our Lord

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
       dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
       Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
      As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
      Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
      Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

      No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
     Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.


Click here for a beautiful reading of the poem.

Happy Easter

God’s Grandeur
Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah!
bright wings.